PyCharm
JetBrains' integrated development environment for Python.
HN commenters like PyCharm as a solid, full-featured IDE,1234 with a highly rated type checker and built-in Git tools.56 The most common complaint is heavy RAM and CPU use,789 and some dislike JetBrains' split product lineup and confusing AI offerings.101112
Why people recommend it
Solid IDE · 3
Commenters describe it as a consistently solid, full-featured IDE with no real competitor.
“Jetbrains (PyCharm, RustRover etc) is as solid of an experience as when I started programming 15 years ago. I would recommend you give it a try!”
“PyCharm and RustRover. It is astonishing no other IDEs have offered direct competition.”
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“PyCharm, on the other hand, was always great to use.”
Type checker · 1
Its built-in type checker is called the best one commenter has used, with inference through multiple inheritance.
“PyCharm's built-in type checker is far and away the best that I've used”
Git integration · 1
A user of many Git tools rates its built-in Git implementation as the best.
“IMO pycharm's internal implementation is still the best”
Caveats and dissent
Resource usage · 3
Users report high RAM use, slowness, and CPU cores pegged at 100%.
“Noticed recently pycharm been acting up and hogging lot of ram!”
“I love PyCharm, but on my work laptop, it feels slow”
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“PyCharm and RustRover. It is astonishing no other IDEs have offered direct competition.”
Product segmentation · 1
Web developers need both PyCharm and WebStorm because neither covers backend and frontend alone.
“Neither PyCharm nor WebStorm alone offers what I need in one app.”
Confusing AI offerings · 2
Commenters find JetBrains' range of AI products confusing.
“PyCharm and RustRover. It is astonishing no other IDEs have offered direct competition.”
“I use PyCharm on a fallback license as a read-only tool nowadays”
Table viewer · 1
One user found the table viewer's rendering broken compared with Excel, possibly due to remote desktop.
“the Pycharm table viewer was not working as well as Excel”
Often compared with
3 moved from PyCharm to Zed
1 moved from PyCharm to Visual Studio Code
1 moved from PyCharm to Claude Code
1 moved from PyCharm to lazygit
1 moved from Neovim to PyCharmRustRover3 comments mention both
Who recommends it in their own words
Threads where it came up
- No More JetBrains Products for Me 3 mentions
- ThinkRail from JetBrains 1 mention
- JetBrains Air: A System of Products for Agentic Software Development 1 mention
- Kale: A Transformation-Safe Spreadsheet System 1 mention
- The Productivity Mirage 1 mention
- Escape IntelliJ: Scala and Kotlin LSPs on Emacs Eglot 1 mention
Data: pycharm.json. Quotes are verbatim; the verdict and theme labels are written by a model from these comments, and every clause links to its sources.
All comments 15
“I use PyCharm on a fallback license as a read-only tool nowadays”
“PyCharm and RustRover. It is astonishing no other IDEs have offered direct competition.”
“the Pycharm table viewer was not working as well as Excel”
“I pivoted to jetbrains stuff— specifically Rider, PyCharm, and WebStorm.”
“PyCharm, on the other hand, was always great to use.”
“IMO pycharm's internal implementation is still the best”
“Jetbrains (PyCharm, RustRover etc) is as solid of an experience as when I started programming 15 years ago. I would recommend you give it a try!”
“PyCharm's built-in type checker is far and away the best that I've used”
“I predominantly work with Python and hence PyCharm as the main IDE.”
“I could not deal with the interminable "indexing"”
“Noticed recently pycharm been acting up and hogging lot of ram!”
“I love PyCharm, but on my work laptop, it feels slow”
“I may eventually be open to using it instead of PyCharm for python”
“Until October 2026 I used mainly PyCharm.”
“Neither PyCharm nor WebStorm alone offers what I need in one app.”